The actors Nakamura Fukusuke I as Matsugae Matonosuke and Ichikawa Komazo VII as Nikki Danjo in the play "Konoshita Kage Masago no Datezome," performed at the Ichimura Theater in the ninth month, 1855

Issued in 1855, this Utagawa Kunisada yakusha-e records a confrontation from the dramatized Date house disturbance, "Konoshita Kage Masago no Datezome," staged at the Ichimura Theater in the ninth month. The print pairs Nakamura Fukusuke I as the loyal retainer Matsugae Matonosuke with Ichikawa Komazo VII as the treacherous villain Nikki Danjo, whose grey, stiff-haired wig and brooding stare were among the most familiar villain types on the Edo kabuki stage. Kunisada was by this date the unchallenged master of Edo ukiyo-e actor portraiture, and his treatment of the scene shows him at the height of his late style: heavy use of textile pattern, dense passages of mica and lacquer-like black, and faces drawn with the slightly bulging eyes and angular jawlines that distinguished his post-1850 actor prints from his earlier, softer Toyokuni III manner. The print also functioned as a piece of commercial communication for the Ichimura Theater, identifying the production, its lead actors, and the publisher and censors who had cleared the sheet under the renewed regulatory regime that followed the Tenpo Reforms. Diptychs and pairs like this allowed Kunisada to dramatize moral opposition between heroes and villains across two sheets, a structural device the Edo ukiyo-e marketplace especially favored for plays drawn from the Soga, Chushingura, and Date narrative cycles. Held in the Art Institute of Chicago, the print is an important document for the study of Edo kabuki performance and the way yakusha-e bridged stagecraft, fan culture, and the print trade.